A new jukebox musical of Carrà’s songs caps a 60-year career for a cultural icon who revolutionised Italian entertainment – and gave women agency in the bedroom
At the beginning of Explota Explota, a new Spanish-Italian jukebox musical comedy set at the tail end of the Franco dictatorship in 1970s Spain, airport employee Maria is making a delivery at a TV studio when she catches the attention of Chimo, the director of a variety show. When she tells him she’s not a dancer, he replies: “No dancer with blood flowing in their veins can resist this rhythm.”
He plays her Bailo Bailo, a hit by Italian pop star Raffaella Carrà, who, on top of becoming one of the best known personalities in her native Italy, ended up a sensation in the 20th-century Spanish-speaking world. Where Sweden had Abba, Italy had Carrà, who sold millions of records across Europe. Sure enough, Maria can’t resist Bailo Bailo, and Chimo hires her.
Explota Explota – titled My Heart Goes Boom! in English, directed by Nacho Álvarez, and currently touring the film festival circuit – pays homage to Carrà’s hits but isn’t a biopic: her songs are performed during the fictional variety show Las Noches de Rosa, and used during the narration as the characters navigate their lives. The film reflects the shifting views on relationships, sexuality and entertainment in a Catholic country: one of the main battlegrounds is how high the hemlines of the showgirls’ skirts can go, and how plunging the necklines can be before a fake flower must be plastered on them for the sake of modesty.
From the 1950s onwards, Carrà was a triple treat who could sing, dance and act equally well, and she had an unrivalled influence in Italian music and pop culture (English was not her first performing language, making her more of a cult figure in the UK). Technically speaking, Italy had far more vocally accomplished singers, who combined range with dramatic flair: Mina, a virtuoso-like mezzo-soprano; Milva, known as Milva “the Red” because of her political leanings and fiery mane, celebrated for interpretations of Brecht and Weill; Patty Pravo, an androgynous alto; and Giuni Russo, who sublimated operatic technique into pop, and had a five-octave range. Carrà outpaced them all.
When, in 1968, youth culture became more politicised and her peers gathered in protest, Carrà travelled to America and saw the musical Hair each night for a month. She returned home with the conviction that Italian entertainment needed a jolt of energy. “She was the first pop icon, but housewives always liked her. She revolutionised TV entertainment,” wrote journalist Anna Maria Scalise in 2008. Carrà herself said in 1974: “I do not get my inspiration from anyone: I speak to children, to sports-watching dads, to wives, so to TV-watching Italian families.”
